Supposedly, there’s nothing as American as apple pie. But if that proverb truly represented an accurate slice of American gastronomy, apple pie would have nothing to do with it.

Corn bread, on the other hand, would.

Enlarge this image

ELISSA EUBANKS/eeubanks@ajc.com

Polenta Pudding With Warm Caramel Sauce, garnished with a cinnamon stick, can be a sweet end to a meal.

Enlarge this image

ELISSA EUBANKS/eeubanks@ajc.com

From the spoonbread (above) of the South to Maine’s sweet corn muffins and New Mexico’s tortillas, the nation cooks with corn.

Enlarge this image

ELISSA EUBANKS/eeubanks@ajc.com

Pupusas filled with cheese are popular in El Salvador. They’re made with corn-based masa harina and are thicker than tortillas.

RECIPES:
• Dixie Spoonbread
• Polenta Pudding With Warm Caramel Sauce
• Pupusa de Queso (Cheese-filled Pupusas) | Step-by-step photos

Meridith Ford Goldman Biography Table Talk blog Restaurant reviews AJC Top 50 Restaurants Recipes by Meridith Ford Goldman Related links: AJC Food & Drink Evening Edge Recipes from Atlanta restaurants Favorite Atlanta recipes

From tales of Squanto teaching the Pilgrims how to plant corn that first winter of their New World to the spoon breads of the South and Midwestern plains, corn has been the most integral part of North (and South) America’s gastronomy.

Corn turned into cornmeal. Cornmeal turned into Rhode Island’s johnnycakes, Maine’s sweet corn muffins, New Mexico’s tortillas and Georgia’s skillet corn bread. Cornmeal turned into hoe cakes, corn bread dressing and casserole.

While Native Americans in South America had been cultivating and using a form of corn as a food staple for nearly 7,000 years before the Columbian Exchange, the Europeans who arrived here had never seen or tasted it. Who could guess that just a little more than 200 years later corn (maize) production would be among the world’s most profitable farm industries (though most corn is grown for feed and chemical production, not eating — but that’s another column).

It’s hard for those of us who grew up below the Mason-Dixon Line to admit that corn bread — yes, indeed — does exist beyond the South’s borders. I remember inviting two chefs — both from New England — to my home for a real Southern meal (we were colleagues at Johnson & Wales University at the time): black-eyed peas, braised pork shoulder, chow-chow and, of course, corn bread. I baked it in a cast-iron skillet. I couldn’t wait for them to try this true Southern meal.

During dinner, however, it became apparent that the corn bread was not to either’s liking.

“You’re supposed to use it to sop the pot likker from the peas,” I explained, Southern drawl withheld.

No way. Too polite to get specific, it was still apparent that the South’s unsugared version of cornmeal mixed with buttermilk, eggs and oil tasted to them like something they’d feed their dog.

They were used to the sugary muffins New Englanders love. I’ve eaten sweet corn muffins everywhere in New England — even in the breadbaskets of Italian restaurants. For breakfast. At tea. As a snack.

So as Southerners, we shouldn’t get so highfalutin — there is no region in this country that doesn’t use cornmeal to its advantage, whether pressed into tortillas to make chilaquiles or formed into the crusty puddinglike mixture Creoles call couche-couche.

It’s all American, and all corn bread.